Answer
All praise belongs to Allah, Lord of the worlds.
As for someone who travels solely to visit the graves of the prophets and the righteous: may he shorten the prayer (1) during that journey? There are two well-known opinions:
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The first—held by the earlier scholars who do not allow shortening the prayer in a journey undertaken for sin, such as Abu ʿAbd Allah Ibn Battah, Abu’l-Wafa Ibn ʿAqil, and many other predecessors—is that shortening is not permitted on such a trip, for the journey itself is forbidden. The schools of Malik, al-Shafiʿi, and Ahmad likewise hold that a journey prohibited by the Sacred Law does not allow the shortening of the prayer (2).
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The second opinion is that shortening is allowed. This is the view of those who permit the concession even in a sinful journey, such as Abu Hanifa. Some later Shafiʿi and Hanbali scholars who permit travel to visit the graves of prophets and the righteous—among them Abu Hamid al-Ghazali, Abu’l-Hasan Ibn ʿAbdus al-Harrani, and Abu Muhammad Ibn Qudama al-Maqdisi—adopt this position as well. They maintain that such a journey is not forbidden, basing themselves on the general import of the Prophet’s, peace and blessings be upon him, statement: “Visit the graves” (3).
Some who are unfamiliar with hadith may cite as evidence the reports transmitted about visiting—